*
Walt Jenkins drove his unmarked government SUV, the keys to which Jim Oliver had handed him on his first night back in New York. He nearly pulled down Stonybrook Circle after he had seen Avery’s red Range Rover make the turn. Instincts, however, told him not to. It was a good thing. After he spotted her vehicle stopped in the middle of the road in front of a gravel drive, she had turned around and come back his way. The winding, empty mountain roads did not make the best environment to tail someone.
He watched her turn and head back toward the city. Walt was happy to give her a bit of room. He turned onto Stonybrook Circle now and stopped in the same spot Avery’s Range Rover had been a moment before. There was only a single, isolated home on this short stretch of road.
He resisted the urge to park on the shoulder and check the place out. That was not his job. He was on a surveillance operation and his goal was to collect information and pass it on to Jim Oliver. He used his cell phone to take a few photos of the A-frame cabin and the wooded area on either side of it. Then he twisted the steering wheel and pulled close to the mailbox, where he snapped a photo of the address. His mind quickly made the connection between the faded sevens on the mailbox and the numbers that were scrawled on the postcard he had seen in Avery’s hotel room.
Walt dropped his phone on the passenger’s seat, twisted the car around, and accelerated to catch up with Avery.
CHAPTER 55
Manhattan, NY Wednesday, July 7, 2021
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, ONE WEEK SINCE SHE MET ANDRé Schwarzkopf, Avery sat on the F train and bounced toward Brooklyn for her second meeting with the mysterious man she had been put in touch with. The same ripple of worry that had originated when she watched Walt outside her hotel on Monday morning was back again now. This was the crux of the plan. Once she had the passport, everything else had a chance of working. Without it, there was no chance at all. She tucked her purse tight to her side as the subway rocked along the tracks. In her purse was the remaining cash for the purchase. She hoped for a quick exchange this time around. She imagined standing on the front stoop of the brownstone and ringing the bell, André opening the door and handing her the passport in exchange for the rest of the payment. Then she would be off and done with the shady business of procuring false documents. Other things would have to go her way for it all to work, but this was the next critical step in the arduous journey she had started long ago.
Despite an array of empty seats on the subway car, a man sat down in the seat next to her, trapping Avery between him and the window. He wore Bose headphones that barely muffled the music that blistered from them. She tucked her purse closer to her side. The man stared straight ahead and ignored her. The train made a stop and the sliding doors opened. A few passengers exited and were replaced by others who boarded. Avery thought for a moment of telling the man that she needed to exit the train, despite her stop in Brooklyn being thirty minutes away. Before she could muster the nerve, the doors closed and the train rocked back into motion. Music continued to blare from the man’s headphones. A few minutes later the train slowed for another stop. The man reached into his backpack, which rested on his lap, and pulled out an envelope. He dropped it casually onto Avery’s lap, never looking at her.
“Change of plans,” the man said, staring straight ahead.
When the train stopped this time, the man stood abruptly. Before she could ask a question, he was up and through the sliding doors as soon as they opened. She watched through the window as the man pulled the backpack over his shoulders, walked through the turnstiles, and jogged up the stairs. Avery waited for the train to start moving before she picked up the envelope. It was not sealed. She slid the index card from within and read it.
9/11 memorial. North reflecting pool. Wait for me there.
—André
Avery looked around the train wondering what was happening. The image of her making a fast exchange with André on the front porch of his brownstone was replaced now with images of her being arrested and placed in the back of a police cruiser, hands cuffed behind her. She looked up at the map to see where she was. The financial district was two stops away. She thought of calling the whole thing off and ending this nonsense. Of exiting the subway on the next stop and hailing a cab back to the Lowell. But that would mean ending the plan before it had a chance to work.
The train slowed and stopped. She stayed seated and watched the faces of the passengers exiting and entering the car. The doors closed and the train took off. Her right foot tapped away to expel her anxiety. When the doors opened at Fulton Street, she was up and out of her seat and hurrying out of the subway. She walked up the steps of the platform. The empty sidewalks she had known over the weekend were, indeed, gone, replaced now by hundreds of commuters and tourists.
She walked west on Fulton for three blocks, looking over her shoulder as she did, until she came to the 9/11 memorial. She passed the white oak trees that populated the memorial grounds. She stopped when she made it to the north reflecting pool, which occupied the footprint where the North Tower once stood. In its place was now a square hole in the ground lined by granite. Water cascaded elegantly down each side of the memorial and Avery took a moment to listen to its soft murmur. It was easy to hear because, despite the size of the crowd around her, everyone was silent. The tourists were overcome by a natural tendency for calm and respect at this sacred place where so many lives were lost.
Avery ran her finger across the names engraved on bronze parapets that rimmed the top of the reflecting pools. She moved along the perimeter, following the list of names. They were not in alphabetical order, she knew, but instead grouped together to represent whom the victims might have been with when they died. It took a few minutes before she found Victoria Ford’s name. Avery traced her finger across the engraving and thought of all she had learned about the woman in the last couple of weeks. Lost for a moment in her thoughts, Avery did not notice the man standing next to her until he spoke.
“There’s a food truck on Greenwich Street, one block over,” the man said. “Order a Ruben with extra slaw, exactly that way.”
The man wore sunglasses and a golf shirt tucked into jeans. He looked like any of the hundreds of other tourists taking in the sights.
“What’s going on? Where’s André?”
“Ruben with extra slaw. Got it?”
Avery nodded and the man was gone before she could speak another word. She wanted to follow after him, chase him down, figure out what was wrong. Was something wrong, or was this just how André did business? But instead she stayed where she was and continued to stare down into the reflecting pool. Her gaze moved back to Victoria Ford’s name etched in the bronze. She slowly counted to sixty before she moved. Why sixty and not a hundred? Why wait at all and not just run to the food truck? So far out of her element, she had no idea the answer to any of these questions, only an instinct that told her something was desperately wrong.
After a minute, she casually walked to Greenwich Street and found the food truck. She was fourth in line. The service was painfully slow and with each passing minute she felt her pulse rising. Her forehead and neck became beaded with perspiration. When she made it to the window, a man stood with a pencil at the ready, hovering it over a pad of paper.